


Hold on to Love

by The Chronicler (AgentFrostbite)



Series: Hurting is Part of Healing [4]
Category: Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: And they both crying!, And they're both finally listening to it, Angst hasn't quite left the building, Canon What Canon, F/M, Fem!Tony, Female Tony Stark, Hey look they're in the same room together!, Kinda more like pining, Mild Language, No clue who she is, Steve Rogers Has A Heart Too, Toni and Steve finally have a decent conversation, Toni goes home, Tony Stark Has A Heart, Which is great but also kinda ow!, everything is gonna be okay, in which there is some flirting but mostly healing, it's still here but it's tiny
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-01
Updated: 2020-12-01
Packaged: 2021-03-10 06:13:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,590
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27819565
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AgentFrostbite/pseuds/The%20Chronicler
Summary: Toni knew, deep down, that she wasn't going to stay away from the Tower forever, but she expected her reason for going back would be the end of the world. She certainly did not expect it to be because someone had to maintain the dignity of Avenger inductions.
Relationships: Steve Rogers/Tony Stark
Series: Hurting is Part of Healing [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1695832
Kudos: 29





	Hold on to Love

**Author's Note:**

> Fun fact, while writing this, I listened to the Avengers movies soundtrack (I have an obsession with categorizing and a love of soundtracks, so my Spotify playlists are painstakingly crafted) and the track for when Tony finds out about his parents came on, and WOW that was…could not have planned that better.

The next month is full of near-misses. There are Avengers at her place and the Tower, and Toni's never truly alone anymore. The guest rooms are in good use, and she doesn't mind mediating the petty squabbles that break out over which Malibu-Tower duos share a room, but she doesn't admit that, either. She calls the Tower every handful of days, hoping that Steve will pick up, but never asking for him because she's not…there yet. It's one thing to call to chat with someone else and 'accidentally' get Steve. It's another to get that someone else and ask for Steve explicitly. She'd almost think he's avoiding her by not calling here at all, but Clint will sometimes get quiet when he's on the phone and she walks in, so she knows that Steve's talking to people in Malibu.

She wants to talk to him. She just can't choke it out.

So she calls and chats with whoever answers, and they always dance around the subject of Steve and Bucky. Nat's the only one who's offered to tell her about them. Toni always acts like she doesn't care, but "sure, why not; oughta know how the mental health of the team leader is."

As it so turns out, his path has been similar to hers: jagged and broken, but moving forward, even if only an inch at a time. Bucky's acclimated rather well to the chaos of being an Avenger. His formal induction ceremony is next week, and Toni wishes that circumstances were different so she could stand off to the side with a sign that says, "Give Him A Hand," because that's the funniest joke she can think of when it comes to him, and the fact that she's thinking about joking with him, regretting that she can't, should be some kind of monumental marker.

But Bucky's being inducted next week, and instead of the gauntlet of bad jokes and movie marathons and disputes over where to hold it and what colors there will be, it's somber and silent and being done only to protect him. When Toni looks back, she'll wonder if Nat went out of her way to point that out because she knew Toni would do something about it. She'll probably conclude that yes, Nat did manipulate her, but it's for the best, because all of them are still suffering, in some form or another, and it's not fair for Barnes to not get this. After all, the Avengers are kind of a club, and what club is complete without a stupid inaugural week?

Toni packs her bags and gets halfway through them before deciding that she still has stuff at the Tower and probably doesn't need to pack like she's going to a hotel. She takes a couple extra outfits and her toolbox anyway, and she tries very hard not to think about how sweaty her palms are, because _oh my God_ , she's going back. She's going back to New York, to Avengers Tower, to the place this whole crazy crusade started, and even though they don't need her anymore, like she doesn't need them, it's still an _oh my God_ moment.

Her Malibu visitors are Sam, Wanda, Pietro, and Vision. Of them, only the Maximoff twins are surprised that Toni comes down that morning, bags packed, and says "I'm coming with you."

"Why?" Pietro asks bluntly. Wanda smacks his arm and he pays her no mind.

"Because if Barnes is getting inducted, he's doing it right. No Avenger gets on the team without Initiation Week. House rules."

It's been so long since she said 'house rules.' Her throat almost closes up when she does.

"I call shotgun," Sam cuts in to break the tension.

Toni gripes and grumbles, but it's just for show. She gets in the backseat, they talk until they get onboard the plane, and then no-one says anything for a long while. Until they land in New York, actually. Seeing it is…something. The city looks the same; there are no new buildings, the buildings that are there are patchwork of original structure and recent repair, the sights and smells and sounds of the Big Apple are nothing like apples and everything like the bustling life Toni's still not sure she wants to throw herself back into. But she's there, and she can't chicken out now, so she swallows back the bile rising in her throat and orders JARVIS not to announce her presence to anyone in the building. She's not sure how hands-on Barnes's hazing/initiation week is gonna be. Until she tests the waters, she doesn't want to jump in head-first. She's not that kind of person anymore.

Back in the immediate aftermath of Siberia, Pepper made her take life one step at a time. Like building a routine for a toddler, Pepper would plan Toni's day and let Toni make the steps to do it. First it was eating a meal. Then actually making it. Then doing the dishes afterwards. Broken into pieces like that, living seemed much less daunting. It wasn't as frightening or overwhelming. She could move one step at a time, and even if she regressed a bit, she was still doing a little something every day. Toni thinks Pepper would be proud to know the lesson's stuck long enough for her to utilize it here.

Step one: plan it out.

Barnes's week is gonna be razor close. They're already in the middle of day one, which is supposed to be a prank day. She's sure she can set up something suitable and not triggering. Then day two is a bit of a break day, where they play hide and seek and everyone pretends like no-one else lives in the Tower except those who have already been found. Day three is a fun day, with games and movies and popcorn, staying up way too late to be healthy – which they all do anyway – and crashing till well into the next morning. Day four is an all-out prank war day. Day five is a quiet day that usually ends up with some soul-baring and therapy sessions. Day six, they don't speak in English at all, except for Bruce, who speaks proclaims to speak nothing else, which is total BS, but who's gonna call him on it? Day seven, the final day, they go over codenames and aesthetics if they haven't been set already, room layouts and preferred parameters, and to break the tension, they have a Nerf war that usually extends after that day and into the next week.

So the plan's there. She just needs to get everyone onboard yesterday fast, and _geez_ , she's really cut her work out for herself this time.

She decides to go with the good ol' shaving cream jet trick on Barnes's door, because she seriously doubts anyone's ever assaulted him with shaving cream. She then decides, for whatever Godforsaken reason, to prank Steve by unscrewing his lightbulb, standing in his room, and breathing very quietly. Simple startle jumpscare, and oldie but goodie.

She doesn't know why she's doing it. She only knows that she wants to see him sooner rather than later, and since Barnes and Rogers are buddies, Steve's getting pranked, too.

Okay, that's a total lie. She knows why she's doing it. It's the same reason she took care of Steve's flowers, rather than leaving them to die. They're in her room here now, in the window so they'll get sun in the morning. She cradled them on the flight and slipped literally everyone running the flight four hundred dollars each not to say anything. They are her one tangible link to the past, something that seems to have survived Siberia in its totality.

Steve still loves her. Despite all the hell they've been through, the pain they've inflicted on each other, the waking nightmare of the last year, he still loves her.

And she loves him.

She also loves herself enough to give them a chance.

He takes for-freaking-ever to come back to his room, and she doesn't have a clock and his isn't plugged in. It could be three hours or thirty minutes; she's never been good with judging time longer than five minutes or less, which is why she is the one Italian who has never cooked a thing in her life. When he eventually does show up, he's muttering something about forms to file and clearances to get. She'll iron out all the crap with SHIELD once the hazing week is over.

He clicks the switch. Nothing happens. He turns it on and off again. Toni has to fight not to laugh.

"Damned light; I just changed the bulb," he growls, stomping in. She absolutely does not stop breathing when she hears his voice.

He stomps into the center of the room, grabs the bulb, then stops. He's just realized it's unscrewed, and only when he gets very, very quiet does it occur to Toni that maybe this wasn't the best idea. She wills him to screw it back in, and when he doesn't, she taps the wall behind her twice, directly over a sensor. JARVIS turns Steve's closet light on, and Steve's immediate reaction is to turn toward it and throw whatever he was holding, which, as it turns out, is his sketchbook. The one she got for him.

She could read into it and get cranky, but she decides it's not worth it to punish either of them for an instinctual reaction. "You getting deaf in your old age, GG?"

He freezes like he's been shot. He stands dead still, and if she didn't know him better, she might think he wasn't moving at all. But she does know him. She knows him enough to know that he _is_ moving – his mind is going at a million miles a minute, trying to decide whether or not he should turn and look at her and maybe prove that it's not her there at all. No-one else knows their inside joke, though. No-one knows that she calls him GG for Greatest Generation, a nice little jab at his age for when she's already used 'old' in the sentence. She's never explained it to anyone else, no matter how many times she's used it around them, and so no imposter would know to pair it with 'old age.'

He turns. His eyes hurt to look at, but she stares anyway, letting them drive the knives squarely into her heart because that's just _how she is_ , and Starks are Made of Iron. Starks do not back down from pain, and Toni's not about to start now. She stares and feels like she's bleeding, but on the inside, where no number of bandages or coagulants can stop it. She absentmindedly notices, beneath all her own pain, that there's something off about his eyes.

"Toni."

It's quiet enough that she barely picks it up. When she blinks, a tear slips, much to her dismay.

He takes a couple hesitant steps forward, then stops, like he's being pulled backwards on a string. He reaches up and twists the lightbulb in so he can see if it really is her, and when the bulb goes in all the way, the light floods the room, blinding her, but not him. Never him. As her vision clears, she sees him still standing there, open with his heart on display for her to see.

He looks thinner. Then again, she's still about twelve pounds lighter than when he last saw her, and her eating habits weren't great to begin with. He has bags under his eyes that are deeper than any she's ever remembered seeing, while she, for once, has gotten weeks of decent sleep in a row. There's something else in his eyes that still looks wrong. His hands dangle uselessly by his sides, and she tries not to look at them, or anything but his face, because his _face_ is what she wants to remember, not the hands that held the shield and pushed her away by protecting Barnes, the hands that knew how to love her and apparently how to hurt, the hands that were rough from grabbing that shield but also smooth because they were artists' hands, a sketcher's fingers, calloused at the fingertips-

"I see your interior decorating skills still suck," she remarks in a tone too close to defensive for her liking. "Beige walls? Geez, might as well get musty quilts and knit sweater-vests."

"What are you doing here?" he rasps, still drinking her in like he can't believe she's really there.

She smiles her trademark crooked smile, happy to have something to focus on other than the pain. "I heard Barnes was about to become an Avenger, and I'll be damned if I let anyone onto this team without the proper hazing week."

Now his eyes close, now he's the one letting a tear slip, and her whole body aches to cross the room and wipe it off his face. She refuses it, because that is _not_ what either of them need right now. They're both trying to find the ground beneath their feet, and she doesn't need to rearrange it again. When they open, she finally understands what she saw that looked so wrong.

There's a bone-deep pain there that's gone. In its place is relief and hope, and it hurts like hell to see, but she stares at that, too, because later – much, much later, when she's in her own bed and she's shut out the world – she'll think about it and feel her own relief.

They stand in silence for another minute longer before he takes a deep breath and squares his shoulders. He shoots her a broken facsimile of his usual 'trouble lives here' grin and asks, "What should I be expecting to see when I go into Bucky's room?"

"You're not going in there before he does, and I'm definitely not telling you so you can warn him," she replies. The rhythm is so easy to find, standing here in this place that both is and isn't her home turf, and she's unspeakably grateful for it. "It wouldn't be fun or fair, now would it?"

"No, it wouldn't," he admits. "Did you run it by Tash?"

"Nah, but I really doubt he's run into this particular prank in any negative manner before," she answers.

He's silent for a long moment, studying her. She's about to ask if there's something on her face when he finally talks.

"So it's shaving cream."

"You asshole," she snarks, stride up to, and then past him.

She is careful not to let their shoulders touch, but she does look back as she's rounding his doorframe, and he's staring at her like he used to, way back when they were six outcasts who just saved New York and none of them knew how to go home. He stares at her like he can't figure her out and it's the best thing he's ever run into. He stares at her like she is the moon and artists have never been able to resist the moon. And amazingly, she finds that she is looking back at him like she used to, like he is something much deeper than his Americana persona and she doesn't mind archeology, like he is the sun and she'd die to feel warm.

She knows in her heart that she is home now, because home has always been someone to fight for, and she's holding on to their future with a white-knuckle grip.

**Author's Note:**

> Hey, y'all! Frostbite here with a quick note. I volunteer at an organization in Middle Tennessee called Saddle Up! It's a therapeutic riding program that serves kids who have both physical and mental disabilities. It is the only organization of its kind in the whole of Middle Tennessee, and it changes lives every day. Thanks to the support of so many amazing people, we were able to surpass our fundraising goal! Thank you to all of you who took the time to read these notes, even if you didn't donate. Your support is so appreciated! Happy writing and Merry Christmas!


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